The sentence of the high court of parliament was. not rigorously inflicted. After a short imprisonment, he was released from the Tower, and the other parts of his sentence were also remitted by the king, who. granted him a pension of .7€1800 a year. The re mainder of his days was passed in contemplation. Though at the time of his fall he was sixty years of age, the vigour of his understanding, and the inten-, sity of his application to study, were not in the smallest degree impaired. During the period of his humiliation, tinder the disadvantages of declining health, dejected spirits, and embarrassed circum-, stances, he employed himself in writing and revising those valuable works, which have, in a great mea sure, redeemed his name from disgrace, and placed him in the first rank of modern philosophers. He died at Highgate on the 9th of April 1626, from the effects of some incautious experiments on the preservation of bodies. He was buried in St Mi chael's church at St Albans, where a monument of white marble was erected to his memory. He is re presented sitting in a contemplative posture, and un derneath is an inscription written by Sir Henry Wot ton, to the following purpose : Franciscus Bacon Baro de Verulain, St Alb. Vic., sea notioribus Scientiarum Lumen, Facundiev Lex, sic sedebat Qui, postquam'Omnia Natur alis Sapientiffl et Oval's Arcana evolvisset, Naturcv decretum explevit.
The countenance of Bacon was strongly expres sive, and his ordinary conversation indicated the quickness and universality of his talents. In his per- . son he was of the middle. stature, and his figure was good; but his constitution was by no means athletic. He had a spacious forehead, dark hair and eyebrows, a black penetrating eye, generally looking upward, a very grave cast of features, and a capacity of speaking like a master on every subject. 44 At one time, (says Osborn,) he would entertain a country lord, in pro per terms, relating to horses and dogs; and, at ano ther time, outcant a London surgeon." His opi nions and assertions were received as oracles; but he always encouraged others to speak their sentiments, and, in repeating the observations which he thus drew forth, he never failed to clothe them with a new dignity and grace, and to enrich them with the additions of his own wisdom. Thus, (to use the words of his chaplain, Dr Rawley,) " he would light his torch at every man's candle." A remarkable peculiarity in his constitution' is gravely attested by the same biographer. 44 It would seem the moon had some principal place in the figure of his nativity; for she never was in her passion, but he was seized with a sudden fit of fainting, and that though he took no previous knowledge of the eclipse." He was married about the age of forty, to a daughter of Alderman Barnham, a lady of considerable fortune, by whom he had no progeny. In the discharge of his public functions, it is said, that he always acted with courteousness and humanity, or, as the king ex pressed it, 44 suavibus modis ;" but there is to great reason to suspect that his urbanity was altogether artificial, and his affections cold and selfish. As a
lawyer, he attempted to rival Sir Edward Coke, one .of the greatest ornaments of the bench ; and in point of eloquence, he was perhaps superior to that great man. Over his moral infirmities truth forbids us to throw the veil of silence. His grosser corruptions, which dre‘• down on him the vengeance of the laws and the contempt of all honest men, are sufficiently blazoned in the page of English history. But it is perhaps equally mortifying to refkct on that defi ciency of principle, that absence of ingenuous feel ing, that tendency to dissimulation, that everlasting struggle to aggrandize himself by menial arts and beggarly importunities, and even by the more sordid instrumentality of detraction ; all of which may be traced in the undoubted memorials of his private life, from the inauspicious moment when his father thought fit to direct his steps into the tortuous paths of political intrigue. To the early bias which he acquired in the train of an ambassador at the court of France, we are disposed to ascribe many of his future aberrations. It may seem harsh, to pronounce so Freely concerning the abject disposition of a' man whom posterity reveres. But he has taken care to perpetuate the remembrance of his own servility. We cannot accuse his biographers of having imprudently d•fled the repositories of a departed friend, that they enight add to the magnitude of his remains, by re cording the garrulity of his private hours, and even the traces of his frailties. He bequeathed his letters and speeches to Dr Williams, bishop of Lincoln,'(his successor as lord keeper,) leaving him at liberty to publish them; and this, according to his own ac count, he did in imitation of Demosthenes, Cicero, and Pliny, who carefully preserved their orations and epistles. Not content with writing a letter to this purpose, he thought fit to give hisinjunetion greater _solemnity, by inserting it in his will. What can be .inore disgusting than the fulsome parasitical flattery contained in his letters to the favourite Villiers? 'Who would believe that the immortal Bacon, at the age of fifty-five, was capable of bending so low as to profess it to he his greatest ambition to be the best seri-ant of the king's stripling 'minion •? His letters to this dissolute youth, when only in the dawn of his honours, are most elaborately written, and, as several copies of some of them, with considerable variations, have been preserved, it is evident that he matle re peated attempts, before he could satisfy himself with the laboured 'compliments and specious pretences, by which he strove to make Villiers believe, that in forwarding his wishes, he would gain lasting honour to himself.